Jurassic Park
by NicholasConners
Summary: A group of researchers become trapped on Isla Sorna. With only one member of the team returned to the mainland, another group seeks out people that have experience with these great islands of death to finish their mission, and begin a new one to find their lost team.
1. Introduction

Isla Sorna. 207 Miles West of Costa Rica.

A symphony of cicadas and birds play under the veil of night in the dense jungle of Isla Sorna. A croak joins the chorus, then another bird and insect join the musical piece. How calming the noise of nature as it plays its sonorous desires under the full moon, ever watchful of the island beneath it.

A noise breaks the bridge of the song that does not fit into their work of natural art. A splash, another, then a third and then fast, heavy crunching as the wet, crisp flora is beaten beneath boots. Three men crash the symbols of serene nature with their panicked haste to reach the final note unscathed by the passage of what the music has to say. The tone betrays the serenity of the night soon drowns all connection the jungle had to itself with their cacophony of distress.

One, a tall thin man breaks through a small circle of tall cycads and finds a fallen tree ahead of him. Unscathed by the obstacle in his path, he rushes forward as fast as his legs will take him and leaps over the fallen conifer. He glances back, a blur of the original tree still set in the grown, broken roughly half way up its length, then toward the line of cycads where another man breaks through. He jumps the tree and calls out to the third man behind.

His body rebounds fast from the leap and he continues on, but a sound breaks his run. He staggers forward as his body wants to move, but his eyes need to turn. The third man has fallen, his chest slammed against the curvature of the log he had not been prepared for.

The second man turned, his glasses blurred by the thick, choking humidity that threatened to seize his very sight. He rubbed at them hastily and then searched for the first man, but he had fled deep into the jungle ahead of them. The third he could hear hurried to climb the log, gasps of flesh being scraped by jagged bark.

 _Run!_

He had to, it is what is instincts told him, but the man in him needed to save his friend. He took that risk and pulled the other, a blond man, his face from the corner of his lips to his ride ear streaked in crimson. His hands were wet from mud and blood and reached out for help.

"Quickly, we need to get out of here!" The second aided him and then something made them pause as though they were deer before headlights.

The puddle beneath them rippled in tone with a deep thud that resonated up form the Earth and into their chilled hearts. Prematurely the second tugged away and tried to pull the other with him, which caused the man to drop face first into the mud. It was too late to grab for him.

All too quickly his glasses fogged again and he could only see a blur break through the dense foliage, but the foul smell and the hiss told him he needed to run, or else he will become another member of the graveyard known as Isla Sorna.

"No!" Was all he could hear screaming through the forest before it was drowned by his feet that pushed on to exhaustion and the beat of his heart, which thumped harder than he had ever felt before.

Beyond the clearing of the jungle was a cliff that lead straight down to the calm waters below. So serene was the setting you would almost think that nothing happened, that this was relaxing night on Isla Sorna. That's what the man in the boat thought as he sat, stretched out captain's chair half asleep and headphones over his ears. He was a Costa Rican native and waited for his clientele to return from their mission, when he was suddenly awoken by a strange sight out of the half-lidded daze of his eyes, he didn't realize just how soon, and just how rushed they would be to leave. The boat wasn't even turned on, but he sure burst into action when a man suddenly appeared at the top of the cliff and leapt like a monkey with no branch to reach for.

After the loud splash of a body broken through the tense surface, the captain lit the waters with a spotlight to find him. Soon enough a head and a yell guided his light like the spotlight of a lighthouse to the man astray.

Exhausted, the tall man reached out for anything and found a hand guided him up onto the boat. Water splashed over with his body onto the deck and he took that precious moment of reprieve to finally breathe. He pointed up at the cliff and the captain did as he was told, the jungle above them spotlighted for all to see.

As the captain watched, he turned to see the rescued man had gotten back a burst of energy and had started the motor. It took a moment to rev, but as it did, and the loud rumbling of water being churned up was distracted by a sight at the top of the cliff.

That deep, heart-gripping pounding of the Earth chased the second man until he reached the cliff just ten meters past the tree line. He cleared his lens as a focused light searched for his eyes through the fog-stained glass.

"Jump!" A voice yelled to him and he saw the two men on the boat. Two, not a third.

"I can't!" He returned and looked down the distance to the rocks and waters now disturbed by the motor.

This was the worst time for his fear to grip him, but now it was a war between the terror of heights and that which he could hear hot on his trail.

"We need to go!" The captain was panicked.

"Okay, I'm going to jump! I'll count to three!" The second man ran his fingers through his black, muddied hair. He knew he had to, but one does not simply forget all his other fears when one more joins the fray. He felt his knees buckle, his body moved aquiver.

The boat began to move and the light taken from the cliff, the man left on the island shrouded in the veil of nightfall, the only light was found under the mocking eye of the moon. It watched as if with interest as a great crashing noise broke through the trees.

Teeth was all he saw.


	2. The Diggers

Gebel Al-Dist, Bahariya Oaisis, Egypt. The Bahariya Formation.

Sand spat upward from the western desert of Egypt as thick, black wheels scraped the flesh of the Earth on its journey under the harsh light of day.

The jeep wrangled its way through the desert with ease, careless of the sand dusted off the shelf the Earth as it reached a large conical formation and brought itself to a sudden halt. The passenger door opened after an abrupt stop.

She had waited for word back on the mission at Isla Sorna, the woman that watched the jeep approach from almost atop of the formation. She turned toward three others, all on their hands and knees before a protrusion in the rock, discolored against the bleak, golden shade of sand that surrounded them like an endless sea.

The figure of a person, melted in the heat to her eyes until he drew closer, made an ascent toward them. When he saw her, he tried not to look long at her, as though she were the sun, but all the same, saw her, even without looking. She made the descent to meet him, this man she saw dressed in a white shirt and light green khaki shorts, face barely shaded under an off-white Sombriolet hat. A nervous smile curved around her face with recognition and heat. When she shaded her eyes with the faint protection of her hand, she was able to see him better, but now the small figure of the jeep looked lonely against the vast expanse of the desert.

When they met at the checkpoint between distances, he reached out and took her hand in greeting. After that, she shades her eyes and looked at him as though he should be two men, not one.

"Hello, Eddy!" She said with a thin smile. "What's this I hear from the airport? Ethan's not with you?"

"My apologies." Edward returned.

"Audey, look!" A voice from the team at the site called down to her.

"Come, I'll show you what we're working on. Ethan should be here, he'd like this. He must be getting a lot of research done on the island. Personally, I like to stick to the bones. They don't bite." She said and traced the rock and sand tracks back up to the dig site.

Edward took his hand in his hands, traced around the curve, nervous. She turned away from him and was on the move. He followed as quick as he could behind her.

"Well," his voice quickly dissipated into the desert air.

"Wow!" She remarked when she reached the site.

The team moved their bodies apart to reveal the find. A few protrusions in the rock had to be brushed and carved carefully to reveal what it could be, but once they had traced its length something emerged that was more than a mere abnormality in the stone.

It was a skull.

"We haven't uncovered the whole thing, so we're not sure how long, but if you look here, you can see where the eye was and down, here, brush that off," a young team member wiped away the sand to reveal a small row of sharp teeth that seemed embedded into the Earth, taking its last bite.

"What is it?" Edward asked.

Audey turned to him with a wide grin, and turned back toward the fossil find, her finger pointed out along the rock to show where they had slowly begun to unearth a series of bones, all which seemed scattered; dissonant, until they were able to trace it back to the head of the animal.

"Spinosaurus _aegyptiacus_." She answered.

"Something went wrong with the mission, Audey." His revelation ruined their moment.

It was hard to believe the desert was part of the Earth when the night fell and the reflection of the sun faded away from the skin of the planet, like the water that evaporates before it could be tasted. It was also cool, more so than they could believe when the sun brought such immense heat to the land. Civilization wasn't too far from them, but their tents made for good substitutes in the western desert. Beyond it, small solar lights illuminated a path toward the dig site, energized by the fury of the sign earlier in the day.

Despite the desire for the cool shade of night, the team were curved around a synthetic torch to light their faces, and give them enough sight to reach their tents without stepping on a scorpion, or themselves.

The team, huddled and murmuring were minus one and could hear the low audible discourse of Audey and Edward in one of the four tents.

Her eyes crossed the canvas that fell around them like thin walls until she found his eyes in the dim light of the lamp on the ground by her bedroll.

"Go over it again." She insisted.

"Mark and Perez reached the rendezvous point in near Dominicalito. Mark was visibly shaken, hardly able to really describe what had happened, but Perez mentioned that only Ethan and Mark had jumped out of the jungle like wild men, so he says. Mark made it to the boat, but he had to leave, and started for the coast when he saw a large creature, one of the animals break through the tree line. He said there is a reason they call them the islands of death and that we tempted fate and it came down on us, with the gnashing of teeth."

"Why didn't they go back?" She pondered.

"They were frightened. I don't know what happened to spark the attack, but John and Edward are still on that island. Dead, probably, but I'm not certain. The mission is over, Audey, they want to pull out before anything else happens." Edward's words may have sunk into her heart, but she tried not to let it break her hopes.

"I understand, but if Ethan's alive, then he's still there and there's a chance he's alive. I need to get him back, Eddy." Her eyes burned his with resolve. He could see the roadmap in her eyes that played out before her mind of what needed to be done.

"I advise we deal with this situation now." He pressed her for an immediate plan. One, she could tell in his eyes, that didn't include him joining her.

"I can't do this on my own." She realized.

"If we could get some experts that have dealt with these animals before, maybe you can build a team to investigate the incident on the island safely?" His words tried to make sense of themselves near the end, his emphasis on the last word fell on deaf ears for safe was not something heard of on Isla Sorna.

"Good idea, Eddy. I know just who can help us." She smiled when he asked for a name.

"Who do we ask first?"

"A digger." her eyes crossed to a necklace that dangled from one of the support poles that held the canvas tent up. It was an oval shaped piece of amber, and shown in the dim light, a tiny prehistoric scorpion suspended in the stone, its likeness and death preserved for eternity.


End file.
